


Learning of Another Kind

by Tanaqui



Category: Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/pseuds/Tanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As dresser to Demetriades the Physician, Jestyn must learn to read and write.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning of Another Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



> Thanks to Scribbler for the beta.

"Come," Alexia said, beckoning me.

I finished drying my hands and, with a last check that all was as it should be in the surgery, followed her into the garden.

The table had been set to catch the evening sun, two chairs drawn up side by side, and a scroll and a wax tablet lying on the table before them. Alexia stood with one hand resting on the edge of the table, with the stillness in her I had noticed before, yet also a certain expectancy in her air.

"My father says you cannot read and write."

I nodded. Earlier in the day, Demetriades, preparing a tincture, had asked me to fetch the jar of malabar. I had hesitated before the rows of jars in the cabinet, running my gaze over their labels. The inked swirls and strokes on them were as impenetrable to me as the black whispering pine forest that lined the banks of the Dvina had been when Thormod and I and the rest of the crew of the Red Witch laboured south.

After a moment, Demetriades had said quietly, "The red jar, second from the left in the middle row," and I had picked it up and carried it back to him, not meeting his eye.

Now I did not meet Alexia's eye as I nodded.

"So. That must be amended." When I looked at her, I saw Alexia was gesturing for me to take a place in one of the chairs.

I settled myself gingerly next to her. I was a practical man, or so I had always thought: I could herd cattle or burnish a war cap or wield an oar or a sword. Books and book-learning were for priests and clerks. Also, it now seemed, for the dresser to Demetriades the physician.

"First you must learn your letters." Alexia opened the wax tablet and, picking up the stylus that lay next to it, began to make marks on the smooth surface. "See. Here we have alpha, and beta, and gamma, delta—."

"Wait!" I said a little desperately, trying to follow the movement of her hand as she made the marks, trying to remember how the stroke flowed this way and that. "I didn't see...."

"Oh." Looking up, I saw she had flushed. "Too fast. I'm sorry."

"No, it's, I...." I was suddenly embarrassed at how slow and stupid I must seem.

She waved off my stuttering apologies. I was put again in mind of our first meeting and how I had thought then that she was not one to waste time in useless protesting. Instead, she turned the stylus and smoothed out the marks she had made. "So. Alpha." She drew the letter carefully, so that I could see how it was made—almost like a little twist of thread. She held the stylus out to me and pushed the tablet across. "Now you."

I took the stylus gingerly, trying to hold it as she had done. It felt strange in my hand, and the shape I made with it was clumsy, larger than her neat mark. But she gave me an encouraging smile. "And again...," she prompted.

I wrote another alpha and another, on and on, filling the tablet while the feel of the stylus grew less strange. A sudden memory came to me, as I went on writing, of the Red Witch drawn up on the bank of the Dvina in the evening, and the leaping flame of the campfire, and Thormod standing waiting for me with drawn sword until I joined him.

Alexia had picked up the scroll that had lain next to the tablet and unrolled it, but I saw she was looking at me from time to time, following my progress. When I had filled both leaves of the tablet with letters, and they had become a little neater, I laid down the stylus and stretched my aching fingers.

"What is it you read there?" I nodded at the scroll.

"Homer." She gave a slight shrug of the shoulder.

"It's a story?"

She nodded. "About a hero from long ago. He fought in a war and then he had many adventures trying to get home."

"Did he get home?" I had picked up the stylus again and was turning it idly in my fingers, my gaze fixed on it.

"Eventually." I could hear the smile in her voice.

"Read to me?" I glanced up quickly from under my brows, wondering if I presumed too much.

"Later." She put the scroll down and pulled the tablet towards her, examining the letters I had written. "Good. This is very good. Now we will try beta."

She took the stylus from me, her fingers brushing against mine, and rubbed out the alpha she had drawn and my own first clumsy attempts. Then she drew another letter. "Beta." She offered the stylus back to me.

At last, when I had filled the tablet with betas and gammas and deltas, and then rows of all four letters together, one after another, and my hand was sore with cramp, she took pity on me. Setting aside the tablet, she spread the scroll out on table.

The last of the sun was filtering through the fig leaves fluttering above us as she began to read, her voice soft and clear. "My island stands deep in the sea, and nearer to the West than to its neighbours, which rather face the dawn and the sun...."

I am not sure whether, that first evening, I was paying more attention to the story she told or the sound of her voice or simply her warm presence at my side. I do know that scarcely any time seemed to have passed, though I suppose it must have been a half an hour or more, when I realized she was frowning at the page and it had grown dark enough she could no longer see clearly. She looked up at me and gave an apologetic smile. "Enough for this evening, I think."

"Enough," I agreed.

"And tomorrow you shall practice more letters and I shall read you more of Odysseus's adventures. And in a while and a while, you shall read to me. But, look, here comes Anna with the lamp...."

**Author's Note:**

> The passage from Homer which Alexia reads aloud is the translation Rosemary Sutcliff gives when she has Aquila read to Bruni in chapter 4 of _The Lantern Bearers_.


End file.
